I'd Love to Change the World, but I Don't Know What to Do.

Just so you know...Heidi is doing much better, thank you. Last Saturday, John woke me up and he was crying because she hadn't eaten yet and it had been 4 days, and he was going to take her into the vet to have them run some blood tests. He was so sad for her. I said, "Before you do that, give me a minute. I have one more trick up my sleeve..." When I was sick, I didn't want to eat because I couldn't taste anything, and as we all know, I rarely eat just because I'm hungry, so I thought a stronger taste might help. I also remembered my college years, and that weed was a great appetite inducer. I went out to the garden and found some fresh catnip. Since we apparently don't experience real Winter in Iowa anymore, it was warm enough in February to have new catnip growing. I picked a bunch and tore some up in front of where Heidi was lying. She sniffed it and for the first time in 4 days, I saw her actually eat something...Or at least lick it. I wasn't sure if she actually ate it.

I headed out for a run and while I was running, I thought, "Please, please, please, let Heidi eat something before I get home." When I got back, John was waiting for me with tears in his eyes. This time he was happy crying, because Heidi ate some tuna. Yea!

By Saturday evening when we got home from our ride, she even came downstairs and tried to eat food out of Archie's bowl. You know, because...Reasserting dominance. Anyway, she's pretty much back to normal and we couldn't be happier.

As for us? Well, we had a great weekend. Again, since we don't seem to have much of a Winter here anymore, we decided to make the best of our plus 50 degree weather in February to go on a long bike ride.

We rode 50 miles there and back to Sutliff Bridge.

When we got there, we saw that they were having their golf tournament thingy. It used to be a fund raiser to fix up the bridge, but now I'm not sure what they use the money for.

They put a bowl like thing in the river. It's usually frozen in February, but not this year, so they tied the bowl to the bridge and it moved with the current. People paid for three tries and if anyone actually hit it in the bucket, they would get some kind of prize. We didn't see that happen before we left.

The ride was lovely. We rode with a friend who hadn't ridden outside at all over the Winter, so we went a little slower, but that was okay for me, because I wasn't feeling all that strong.

On the way back, we stopped at Big Grove for an early dinner. Since I've cut way down on my drinking, I had a root beer - which I know is sugar, but I'm still working on my sugar consumption.

When we got home, we watched "Kubo and the Two Strings". I really liked it. You don't see too many fables as movies anymore.

Sunday was in the forties, but it was crazy windy. John was going to ride his bike around the campgrounds at Lake McBride. At first, I thought I'd try to run around by our house, because I wasn't feeling great, but then I really wanted to run around the lake, so I risked it and got lucky.

John dropped me off at the parking lot by the boat house and I ran into the wind to check out the spillway.

As you can tell from my bangs, the winds were strong...

I turned back and ran the other way down the trail toward Solon and had the wind at my back the whole way.

My goal was to try and run 7 miles, but I got a little over 8 miles in. I was pretty tired by the end of it, so I went home and bathed and then took a nice, long, nap.

This weekend is supposed to be even warmer. Seriously - 65 degrees in Iowa in February. All I can do is take advantage of it and play outside as much as possible and try not to worry about what is happening to our planet...